the deliverer of a suffering age. His was an election by the whole nation, in substance at least, if not in form, as was of old the election of Conrad the First, whereby he became king of the Germans, and the founder of the empire. In the subsequent elections, moreover, the same universal veneration for knightly virtue was exhibited. Of Rodolph's unhappy, but noble-minded successor, Adolph of Nassau, it might also have been said, when he fell in battle against Albert, that the noblest hero of Germany had fallen. Adorned with all knightly virtues, Henry of Luxemburg was esteemed, as well in Germany as in Italy, the flower of the nobility; like Rodolph, he succeeded by the rich acquisition of Bohemia in founding the greatness of his house; and the world hoped to see him resemble Rodolph in intellectual energies as a lawgiver and reformer, when a premature death snatched him from its hopes. How simple was the life of the great Rodolph! Before his elevation, he gave many noble and touching proofs that he was well worthy of the imperial dignity; his martial courage, his integrity, and true piety, seemed so many prognostications as it were of his future greatness. After the empire was committed to his charge, he devoted himself exclusively to the task of watching over the administration of justice, and of restoring the empire. Like so many of our old emperors, inheriting no very extensive family demesnes, he, nevertheless, ruled as a powerful prince with vigorous hand, solely by his individual energy, by his personal character, and the reverence he inspired. Rodolph's character is shown in the clearest light during the great contest with the mighty Ottacar-a spectacle such as history has but seldom displayed. On the one side valour united to gentleness and wisdom; on the other, courage heroic indeed, but yet headstrong and imperious, coupled with cruel violence and blinded by pride. Fortune and victory sided for once with virtue. The beautiful province of Austria had lapsed to the empire as an escheated fief on the extinction of the family of Babenberg during the troubles of the interregnum-a prey to various claims equally untenable, it had been distracted more than any part of Germany, until wrested from the detested Ottacar by the victories of Rodolph. Upon this acquisition, with the concurrence of all the princes of the empire, the latter founded the future power of his house. On the one side reigning over Austria. on the other pre

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serving and augmenting its ancient and extensive hereditary demesnes in Suabia, Alsatia, and Switzerland, that house now united under its sway the loveliest regions of southern Germany.

It was not only the internal tranquillity and order, but the external dignity and grandeur also of the empire, that Rodolph sought to uphold. He was watchful to maintain its ancient rights over Burgundy, a kingdom he had destined for his beloved Hartmann, before the Rhine robbed him of his favourite son. A singularly inauspicious star indeed presided over the destinies of the sons and grandsons of this great emperor, so fortunate in his own life. According to old German custom, a reign glorious as his would have given to his house an almost irresistible claim to the succession. But the olden times had passed away, and if the sense of the nation proved still so energetic, that none dared elect any but a hero already ennobled by lofty virtues, nevertheless the election of a powerful prince was carefully avoided. Herein their views were already clearly evinced by the German princes, as they preferred to sever themselves from the great body of the state, and thereby augment their own power under a feeble emperor, than to undertake the arduous duties of the imperial dignity themselves. Another injurious influence displayed itself likewise in these imperial elections. For whole centuries had it been a subject of bloody feud, whether the papal power possessed the right of recognising and confirming an election, which gave not only to the Germans a king, but to all Christendom a temporal head, and now an archbishop of Mayence boasted that he could himself instal and depose the German kings at pleasure! In addition to this, the kings of France were constantly aiming at the imperial crown, and employed their influence over the popes then resident at Avignon to excite factions in Germany. This disposition of the princes, and these factions, were the cause why the great Rodolph's desire to secure the imperial diadem, which he had worn himself with so much glory to his house, was not accomplished until a later period. Albert's mind may have been soured and embittered by the refusal to confer on him the expected crown. And when he had at last won it, it was only by war and his rival's death that he succeeded in fixing it firmly on his brow, but only to be bereaved at once of a crown and life by the murderous lance

of his own nephew, a youth blinded by anger and hatred. The emperor Albert was not so mild and magnanimous as Rodolph, yet we cannot deny that, with all his sternness and severity, in his reverence for justice he equalled his father. To blame him exclusively for the events that occurred in Switzerland, to paint him as the cruellest of tyrants, in order that the picture of Swiss enfranchisement may make a more vivid impression, were to judge, as often happens, accidental consequences, rather than the real facts, and the spirit of the parties in connection with the circumstances of the time. Not Albert, not any individual prince or sovereign, but the whole nobility of the period, are open to the reproach of having rendered their sway more oppressive and tyrannical than it was originally meant to be, and than in earlier times it had actually been. Even if in their first struggles for freedom, the warlike mountaineers sought only to restrain such excesses, yet in their later enterprises it can scarcely be maintained, that they always observed moderation, or that justice was always on their side. For Germany Albert's death was indisputably a great loss: even a stern emperor would have been preferable to the subsequent party contests. The brilliant hopes which the chivalrous Henry of Luxemburg had excited, were immediately extinguished by his premature death. The rival claims of the houses of Luxemburg and Austria upon Bohemia, engendered an unhappy discord between them, and occasioned a double election. Simultaneously with Frederick the Fair, the third emperor of the line of Hapsburg, Lewis the Bavarian was, by the influence of the house of BohemiaLuxemburg, called to the throne.

The history of the long reign of the latter is remarkable only for his struggle with Frederick the Fair, by a renewal of the vehement contest with the Church, and by the augmentation of his hereditary domains through the acquisition, not altogether legitimate, of Brandenburg, the Tyrol, and Holland. He was not animated with the chivalrous spirit which we remark in the other emperors of that age, wherein, among all the sovereign houses, not one was so distinguished as the Austrian. Who is ignorant how, after long wars, a lost battle threw Frederick the Fair into the hands of his rival; how by him he was treated with great severity, and forced to purchase his freedom by a most disadvantageous peace; how he was prevented by the angry violence of his faithful

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but ambitious brother, Leopold, from fulfilling the terms of the compact, and then, unlike King Francis the First in later times, true to his honour and his plighted word, he surrendered himself once more as a prisoner to his foe? Deeds like these in the ancestral chronicles of kings are indeed their brightest ornaments, and badges of genuine honour. Even the heart of Lewis the Bavarian was moved by it, although not for any length of time.

Yet the self-devotion of the high-minded Frederick gave no peace to Germany. Bavaria and Bohemia, under the earlier Luxemburg princes, attended to their own interests exclusively, and hence were disunited. Both aimed at the imperial crown, but only sought upon that imperial dignity to found the glory and the greatness of their own house. Hence, despite their rivalry, their system of government was very similar, and their disjoined dominion of brief duration. The princes of Rodolph's line sought a more exalted sphere of glory; and hence Austria, after many and deep misfortunes, again rose more glorious than ever.

The great parties of Church and Emperor, of Guelphs and Ghibellines, which once divided Germany, had now ceased to exist; so had likewise the old German national races, the Suabians, Franks, Saxons, and Bavarians, by whom the king was wont to be elected. Amid the general disorganization, there were only the princely houses of Bohemia, Bavaria, and Austria, that appear as if they were so many parties. The division between the Bohemian and Bavarian parties was designedly kept up by France. If the long reign of Charles the Fourth restored a certain kind of peace and tranquillity to the German empire, yet his system of government is by no means what it ought to have been, nor does it merit the praise that has been often lavished on his work, because it corresponded with the views of the more powerful princes. The constitution that Charles the Fourth conferred on Germany was by no means a restoration of the ancient national freedom and royal dignity. For that object it would have been, above all, necessary to reestablish the old national duchies of Suabia and Franconia; a restoration which the Austrian emperors, whose principles with regard to the constitution of the empire differed widely from those of the Bavarian and Bohemian princes, more than once attempted. Notwithstanding the sacred number seven, which was fixed upon for

the number of the electors, the golden bull was on the whole arbitrarily drawn up, with a view to promote certain collateral interests of the time.

It was a work without internal unity, whereby, as in after-times by the treaty of Westphalia, the great evils of the state, far from being radically healed, were only rendered painfully endurable, and thereby even perpetuated. By elevating a few powerful princes to so great a degree or power, and by rendering them almost independent, the emperor surrendered his noblest privilege, that of being the protector of the general freedom, and himself laid the foundation for those internal partitions and subdivisions of Germany, which, step by step, brought about the total downfal of the imperial dignity.

Bohemia, however, under Charles the Fourth, attained to so high a degree of material prosperity, as well as of refinement in the arts and sciences, and in the cultivation of its national language, as far to outstrip all other Sclavonic nations. That in the constitution he gave to the German empire, Charles paid regard to its numerous Sclavonic inhabitants, and by special ordinances protected their rights, customs, and language, was only just: it was an individual praiseworthy trait in a work on the whole so imperfect. Although springing from German ancestors, Charles the Fourth, born and bred as he was in Bohemia, had become wholly a Bohemian. As regards Germany, Maximilian was justified in styling him the stepfather of the empire. He was the first to surrender Burgundy, in all, at least, but the empty name; and it was chiefly owing to him and to Lewis the Bavarian, that the empire lost its ancient authority in Italy. Charles the Fourth possessed none of those chivalrous virtues, that had made his ancestor Henry the pride and joy of the German nation, and which had acquired for King John such high renown throughout all European countries. By qualities of another kind, by unwearied activity, by knowledge, and prudence, his reign was really beneficial and glorious for Bohemia, and even apparently so for Germany, until its evil effects were developed in the course of history. To a lower depth, however, than under his son, the deposed Wenceslaus, it was scarcely possible for the empire to sink.

Thus the great work, begun by Rodolph's energy, the regeneration, namely, of Germany, was not to be consum